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Ministry aims for holistic flood mitigation
The massive flooding that hit Greater Jakarta and Lebak, Banten at the turn of 2020, which was worsened by landslides that hit some parts of Lebak regency and West Java, has served as a wake-up call that something must be done to prevent disaster
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span>The massive flooding that hit Greater Jakarta and Lebak, Banten at the turn of 2020, which was worsened by landslides that hit some parts of Lebak regency and West Java, has served as a wake-up call that something must be done to prevent disaster.
The disasters claimed more than 60 lives and displaced thousands others on the first few days of 2020.
The Environment and Forestry Ministry’s secretary-general, Bambang Hendroyono, said that Minister Siti Nurbaya had received direct instructions from President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to restore the ecosystem as part of flood mitigation and the ministry wanted to do it holistically.
“Rehabilitation, including construction of land and water conservation infrastructure, and law enforcement to curb illegal mining and forestry [are needed], but the most important thing is to restore the environment itself,” Bambang told reporters on Wednesday.
The ministry’s water pollution control director, Luckmi Purwandari, said that as floods happened because the rate of water discharged was higher than the rivers' capacity, reducing both of them was important.
“We do that by restoring the rivers with the ‘ecoriparian’ concept, as well as by reducing river pollution,” Luckmi said.
The term "ecoriparian" comes from riparian ecology, referring to all zones adjacent to rivers and streams.
The Environment and Forestry Ministry sought to restore riverbeds to their original state as much as possible, including but not limited to recreating natural wetlands, recovering aquatic ecosystems and reintroducing river-based local culture.
In 2020, the ministry targeted the drainage basins of the Ciliwung, Citarum, Cisadane, Cidurian, Ciujung and Ciberang rivers as the locations for ecoriparian projects.
On the Ciliwung, the ministry has located four possible sites for the project: Ratu Jaya in Cipayung district and Kalimulya in Cilodong district in Depok city, as well as Sukahati in Cibinong district in Bogor regency and Babakan Pasar subdistrict in Bogor city.
On the Cisadane, the ministry mapped Gunung Batu — Loki in Bogor city, Panunggangan Barat in Cibodas district in Tangerang city and Pakuhaji district in Tangerang regency.
On the Citarum, the ministry mapped in Sukawarna in Sukajadi district, Bandung city and Ciseuereuh subdistrict in Purwakarta.
Because of limited land in Jakarta, the ministry had yet to plan an ecoriparian site in the city for 2020.
“Jakarta already had one in Srengseng Sawah, West Jakarta since 2017 but it was also flooded. It means that we still have to improve the concept,” Luckmi said.
She said that the Environment and Forestry Ministry focused on finding the viable location first with the local administration before planning one because doing so by evicting residents would be harder.
“With ecoriparian, we designed the area to target water pollution and also increase the ground water filtration capacity,” Luckmi said.
However, the budget for the ecoriparian project had yet to be decided as the ministry was still calculating the amount of funds it needed in each area.
The ministry’s watershed and protected forest management acting director general, Hudoyo, said disappearing lakes and swamps in Jakarta, as well as land use changes upstream, had worsened the recent floods in Jakarta.
According to the ministry, about 18,300 hectares — 38.2 percent — of former forest area around the capital city was not covered by trees, causing rainwater to run off across the ground rather than be absorbed by the land.
“We are focusing on recovering these critical forest lands over the next five years, as instructed by the President, by both rehabilitating the land and constructing lots of water and land conservation structures,” Hudoyo said during a press briefing recently.
He added that the ministry had also coordinated with regional administrations regarding such efforts, as well as with the Public Works and Housing Ministry regarding the construction of large structures such as reservoirs and retention ponds.
Regarding land rehabilitation, Hudoyo said the Environment and Forestry Ministry could only work on land designated as forest area, while the remaining work would be under regional administrations’ authority. However, the ministry would help by distributing free seeds to the people.
Officials from the central government and regional administrations had issued circulars recommending residents in Greater Jakarta to build infiltration wells in their own backyards. The then-Jakarta governor, Sutiyoso, even signed a gubernatorial regulation in 2005 serving as technical guidelines for constructing such structures.
“However, they have yet to be effectively implemented. We are pushing the intensification of infiltration well construction, especially in the Greater Jakarta area,” the ministry’s river basin management planning and evaluation director, Saparis Soedarjanto, said.
Aside from rehabilitating environmental degradation, the ministry would also move to prosecute illegal waste handlers and unauthorized miners to prevent future floods in Jakarta. The ministry deemed that illegal landfills caused waste to clog water basins and drainage, while illegal miners were also deemed responsible for causing environmental damage in areas around the capital city.
“We will prosecute everyone responsible for these messes, from those working on the ground to people responsible behind the scenes,” the ministry’s environmental and forestry law enforcement director general, Rasio Ridho Sani, said.
